Ten states struggled to pass budgets before the Tuesday deadline, including Illinois. According to the Wall Street Journal, state governments could face partial shutdowns if budgets aren’t created soon.

In Illinois, the new fiscal year has already started with no budget, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

The state will ultimately be more than $9 billion in the red for the fiscal year that starts today, Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration says, unless the Legislature provides new revenue. He has warned of potential deep cuts in human services such as day care subsidies and elder care, as well as interruptions in other state…

The year is just getting underway and the new legislative sessions get underway Wednesday for both Missouri and Illinois legislators.

Reporter Kevin McDermott, in a story today, says that all indications are that it will start in pretty much the same way last year ended: with bickering between Gov. Rod Blagojevich and legislative leaders over Chicago’s mass-transit crisis, downstate infrastructure needs, education funding, gambling expansion and other issues.

Jefferson City reporter Virginia Young writes today that the 2008 legislative session kicks off this week with tax relief for homeowners and health care for the working poor at the top of the agenda. But…

A five-foot-tall wooden cross scribbled with racial epithets was burned early Dec. 8 in front of a Belleville home owned by a black man in a racially mixed neighborhood.

Monday’s story, Cross burning recalls Belleville’s past racial divide, explains that just days earlier, newsletters referencing the Ku Klux Klan were thrown in the driveways and lawns of several Belleville and Shiloh neighborhoods.

Racial strife has run deep throughout the Belleville area in the past. But things seem to be changing — or is it?

“Belleville has made so much progress, this won’t stand in our way,” said Bill Clay, who became Belleville’s first…

The rules of the new Illinois law are still as foggy as our weather this week, but in just three short weeks, smokers in Illinois will be banned from lighting up in public places.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed in July the Smoke Free Illinois Act, which bans smoking in virtually all public places. But a state committee hasn’t adopted the specific rules that clarify the law.

Smoking on patios, for instance, is still uncertain. The law says smoking will be banned in all indoor public places or places of employment, and within 15 feet of an entrance, open window or ventilation intake.

“Our…

I know from experience in this blog that our readers use the Missouri state park system. We’ve talked about it before in the context of the Johnson’s Shut-Ins disaster. I’ll assume that our Illinois readers use the Illinois state park system, too!

This topic is derived from a story we’re working on about the Missouri park system. Park officials are seeking the input of residents on how they can improve the system in the year 2017 and beyond. According to our story, "Ideas from the public will be accepted via e-mail through March 1. Then those ideas will be included in a master…